Funding deal bolsters US nuclear industry confidence

The US nuclear industry received a welcome confidence boost from the US government this week in the form of a $40m grant, even as policymakers continued to puzzle over how to store its waste.

The Department of Energy (DoE) awarded $40m to two companies working to develop next-generation nuclear reactors. Westinghouse Electric and General Atomics will each receive around $20m to accelerate plans for new nuclear reactors which are expected to be safer to operate. These will recycle the heat produced by atomic reactions to help turn turbines and produce greater levels of energy from the same amount of nuclear fuel.

The funding is the latest in a series of measures designed to provide a boost to the US nuclear industry and comes just weeks after president Barack Obama announced the award of $8.3bn in loan guarantees to support the construction of two new nuclear reactors.

The president has made the development of a new generation of nuclear reactors a central component of his climate change strategy. The industry is expecting a further boost later this month with the release of a new draft of the proposed climate change bill. This is expected to include significantly more support for nuclear energy.

However the latest moves come as Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair Gregory B Jaczko this week voiced concerns over current storage policies for nuclear waste.

The highly radioactive nuclear material produced from spent fuel rods has been a source of growing concern for all players in the nuclear supply chain in the past few years. Nuclear experts have also warned of the potential terrorism risk from plutonium rods stored in cooling ponds inside reactors.

Originally slated for storage in an underground facility called Yucca Mountain, the waste has been left sitting in temporary storage after the facility was effectively cancelled by the Obama administration. The DoE last week withdrew an application to open the Yucca Mountain facility following Obama's vow to stop the licensing process.

Jaczko said the current Waste Confidence Rule, which enables nuclear organisations to store waste temporarily while they waited for the Yucca Mountain facility to be completed, remained an "elephant in the room" for the entire industry.

"I'm looking forward to working with my colleagues to develop a rule that will provide stability once and for all in the area of waste confidence," he said in a speech to nuclear industry executives earlier this week.

He advocated that responsibility for decisions on disposal should be handed to a Blue Ribbon Commission that has taken on the task of developing a disposal strategy. "We need a rule that will stand the test of time; a rule that appropriately focuses on our mission," he concluded.

Meanwhile, Henry McMaster, attorney general for South Carolina, is pressing ahead with plans to sue the president over the abandonment of Yucca Mountain, citing the need to dispose of radioactive material currently stored in the state.